The nature of man : studies in optimistic philosophy / by Eĺie Metchnikoff ; The English translation edited by P. Chalmers Mitchell.

  • Élie Metchnikoff
Date:
[1903]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nature of man : studies in optimistic philosophy / by Eĺie Metchnikoff ; The English translation edited by P. Chalmers Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in their own image, giving them all the most beautiful qualities of the human race. Such a conception was a dominant factor in ancient Greek life and civilisation. The adoration of Man embraced the human body, and led to the despising of every mode of tampering with the natural body. Thus, for instance, shaving * of the face was regarded as a humiliation, for a smooth chin gave an unnatural, womanish cast to the face of a man. The adoration of human nature by the Greeks appeared in Greek plastic art, and was the cause of its excellence. The ideal of art was to copy, in the most faithful way, the most perfect example of the human body, and Greek artists made measurements of the body so accurately that modern science has confirmed their chief results.f As sculpture most completely realised the Greek ideal of the human body, it became almost a national art among the Greeks. Greek philosophy had an equally high opinion of human nature, of the human body, and of representations of the human body. Just as Greek art aimed at the presentation of the body of man, so Greek philosophy proclaimed the nobility of all human qualities, and inculcated the doctrine of a harmonious development of all sides of human nature.;]; Such a doctrine was formulated bv Plato, and became a fundamental principle of the Old Academy ; the New Academy assumed it, and handed it on to the Sceptics. According to Xenocrates (fourth century), who * Shaving the beard began at the time of the Macedonian rule, and philosophers refrained from the new custom, which seemed to them unprincipled. (V. Hermann, “ Lehrbucli der griechischen Privatalterthiimer,” 1870, vol. I., pp. 175—177.) t Quetelet, “ Anthropometric,’’ 1872, p. 86. t Zeller, “ Die Philosophic der Griechen,” Third Edition, vol. II 1, p. 741, 1875.
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